This Monday and Tuesday the Evolutionary Ecology unit had their annually Christmas meeting. Many unit members and (mer …)
A Science Christmas at Örenäs
Philip Downing – new post-doc
I have just received my Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and I am now working as a post-doc with Charlie Cornwallis. For my Ph.D. research, I used birds as a model system to test predictions from inclusive fitness theory about the evolution of cooperation.
Charlie and I will develop some of this work and use phylogenetic comparative methods to improve our understanding of altruism in particular. Why is investing in another individual’s reproduction a better strategy for transmitting genes to future generations than breeding independently? What are the consequences of having altruistic helpers for subsequent evolution? Why do some groups with altruistic helpers transform into superorganisms but not others? Are superorganisms ’individuals’, allowing for adaptation at the level of the group? Hopefully nothing too ambitious!
Finbesök på institutionen
Efter 18 månaders arbete hade äntligen Honor Prentice lyckats få hit rektor Torbjörn von Schantz. Idag pratade (mer …)
Grand X-mas meeting with MEMEG
Yesterday afternoon the unit MEMEG had a Christmas meeting at Grand Hotel. After a rather peculiar (mer …)
Neus Latorre-Margalef, new post-doc
I am currently at Lund University on the last year of the International postdoc grant from VR working in Lars Råberg’s group with Borrelia. I am interested on host-pathogen interactions and to understand processes of diversification in pathogen populations.
I received my PhD at Linnaeus University in 2012 where I studied influenza A virus circulating in wild birds sampled at Ottenby, southern Sweden. I was investigating the seasonal dynamics of the virus in migratory hosts, costs of infection and the patterns in subtype diversity at the population and individual levels. The individual infection histories of re-captured mallards indicated that there was strong influence of the virus causing primary infections on the probability of secondary infection by a specific subtype. During the time as postdoc at The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA I tested the influence of the primary infection on the re-infection patterns in mallards by performing experimental infections and exploring the development of cross-immunity to influenza between subtypes. Re-infection in the mallards with a range of subtypes/different viruses indicates that similar subtypes of influenza induce strong protection against infection which implies strong competition in the system that may be driving the diversification of subtypes. Similar processes seem to act in the Borrelia system causing Lyme disease in humans. Therefore it will be exciting to explore the diversity of Borrelia!
Retractable displays and beach flags
The department has now three retractable displays (roll-ups) and two beach flags. You may use these for example when you have a symposium, workshop, conference, course, or such. The beach flags make it easier for people to find their way to the entrance and the roll-ups welcome people in.
Feel free to borrow these whenever you need them. You find them in my room (E-E236) at the Prefekteriet.
Inger Ekström
Produktion av proteiner och sjukdomskostnader
Idag hade SACT ordnat Tandem Talk. Talarna var Dennis Hasselquist och Wolfgang Knecht. Nytt för dagen (?) var att (mer …)
Maria Gourdon – new research engineer at LP3
I am very happy to join the Lund Protein Production Platform (LP3) team. Throughout my research career I have been working on structural and functional characterization of membrane proteins. I did my graduate studies in Gothenburg where I primarily investigated aquaporins (in particular overproduction and crystallization methods). I then moved to Århus, Denmark, studying Na,K-ATPases and became acquainted with low-resolution structure determination approaches. Leaving Århus, I started as a post-doc at Novo Nordisk in Copenhagen focusing on an ion-channel protein. My most recent employment was here at Lund University, at the Biochemistry department, working with membrane protein-membrane/soluble protein interactions in the structural biology group of Susanna Törnroth-Horsefield.
At LP3, I will now be responsible for the crystallization facility: maintenance, assisting users, etc. Do not hesitate to contact me if you are interested in using the facility – we can then discuss how to best approach your target. See you around!
Finding our internal websites and calendars
It seems like it is time to write a small explanation about how you find your way around our websites.
Our web pages are divided into external and internal websites in both (mer …)
En superstrukturerad workshop med tydlig struktur
Igår hade Emma Kritzberg och Johannes Rousk ordnat en struktur- och tidsworkshop med struktören David Stiernholm för institutionens (mer …)
Jing Zhang – new PhD student
My name is Jing Zhang and I am a joint-training PhD student from China. My doctoral major is ecology and my research direction is ecosystem ecology. I am very happy to join the Microbial Ecology group to research the relationship between mycorrhizal and soil organic carbon under Håkan Wallander’s direction.
My PhD project is “Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi resource and its contribution to soil organic carbon in subtropical forests in southern China”. Therefore, my research is focus on mycorrhizal biomass, diversity and glomalin-related soil protein, soil microbial community structure, and the contribution of arbuscular mycorrhizae to soil organic carbon sequestration in natural tropical forests and under climate change scenario. I have done these works in southern China during the first two year of my PhD period. Now I will study in LU for 18 month to research how to use isotope to study mycorrhizae under natural geothermal soil temperature gradients in Iceland. After finish my research here, I will go back to China and get my PhD degree.
Henrik Sjödin – new post-doc
I am very happy to join the Department of Biology and the Theoretical Population Ecology and Evolution Group as a postdoc to work primarily with Per Lundberg and Jörgen Ripa on speciation and biological diversification in multitrophic communities.
I received my master’s degree from Umeå University with a thesis on rainforest biodiversity in relation to disturbances. I received my PhD in Ecology 2014 from Umeå University where I studied ecological and evolutionary dynamics in spatially structured communities. I was thereafter a postdoc scholar with the Evolution and Ecology Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, where I studied mainly the evolution of cooperation in large group-structured communities.
In my postdoc project here we aim to apply a combination of mathematics and data analysis to learn more about speciation and biological diversification in spatially-structured multitrophic communities with high
interspecific interaction-strengths.
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